Re: Is file system replication sufficient to recovery?

Tom Korach <tom(at)safekeep(dot)com> writes:
> We have a Postgresql instance (0.5-4TB in size) used for development and
> on-line reporting.
> We do not need high-availability, but we do need:
> 1. Quick disaster recovery (<1 hour) is important.
> 2. Recovery from corruption of the server or mistakes.

> Will file-system replication be enough to achieve this goal?

What do you mean exactly by "file-system replication"? Something
equivalent to rsync will absolutely not work against a running
Postgres server, because it won't capture a consistent state of
all the files. If you have (and trust) a filesystem with snapshot
capabilities, it might work to take a filesystem snapshot and hold
onto it long enough to rsync from the snapshot. I'm not sure about
the reliability or performance implications of such a setup, though.
See

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/backup-file.html

> Do we also need WAL file archiving?

Not as long as you capture the currently-active WAL files along
with the database contents.

regards, tom lane